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History
Venus and Apollon (Note: these early details are almost verbatim from the manga and wiki) Before the Impact Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets and had the longest rotation period (243 days) of any planet in the Solar System. It had no natural satellites. Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. However, Venus was originally a hellscape. Its atmosphere consisted of over 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface was 92 times that of Earth, or roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth. Venus was by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a mean surface temperature of 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F); hot enough to melt lead. Venus was shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. Despite its similar composition to Earth, Venus was considered one of the least hospital locations in the solar system. That all changed with the arrival of Apollon. Apollon's Arrival (2003) It was in August of 2002 that an object was first detected by the Sokolov Observatory in North America. It passed through the outer limits of the solar system, 65,000 AU away from Earth, and entered the realm of the inner planets for the first time in three thousand years. Apollon was a giant ice world, previously a distant minor planet. As it closed in on its unwitting target, its surface glowed like a comet. Approaching along the plane of the elliptic on May 12, 2003, the titanic ball of ice and rock smashed into Venus. This great collision forever altered the face of the planet. The thick atmosphere of Venus was rent asunder, much of it blown into space. Part of the several hundred trillion tons of ice fragments combined with the remainder of the atmosphere forming acidic seas in the lowlands on the surface. The leisurely rotation of the planet was sped up, making it approximately 112 days, giving Venus a single day/night cycle per year (I might change this to a day lasting approximately 30 days, though I realize that such a increase of rotation is probably even less realistic). Man's First Settlements (2007-2012) (Note: from this point on, most of the historical fluff is original, or at least it is not specifically from the Venus Wars manga) The first manned mission to Venus was in 2007. Led by an international team of scientists, it was the desire of the Euro-American Union, the largest governing body on Earth, to explore this previously inaccessible world to further science. They could not have been more surprised to see that not only was Venus far more hospitable than they could have have ever imagined, it was actually harboring a vast array of microbial life. Upon further inspection, it was discovered that the life growing on the surface was a combination of Venusian natives and Apollonian hitchhikers. To find any life here at all was astonishing, but to discovery such variety and from so many wildly different sources provided scientists all the reason they needed to expand their exploration. Not long afterwards, numerous space agencies, both private and public, rushed to develop the first long term settlements on Venus in order to hasten its study. Competition was heated as numerous ecological and economic disasters loomed on Earth. Finding extremophile lifeforms from other planets offered the opportunity to create biological tools to combat these global pressures. Though Venus was still extremely dangerous, the first permanent settlement was established on the northern continent of Ishtar in 2012. This first colony and the many more that would soon follow thrived amazingly well on the planet. Under their controlled conditions, the early settlements found themselves growing food in excess and producing atmospheric gases efficiently enough to jump start the terraforming of Venus long before it was ever imagined. The frequency and volume of these early successes caused a massive increase of interest in the once deadly planet. With the promise of a green, Earth like planet, many people of Earth made their plans to immigrate. The next 80 years would prove that their vision of a paradise planet was tainted by rose tinted glasses. Even if it were possible to fully wrestled the wild landscapes of Venus, political strife would change the face of Venus from one of beauty to that of war.